New Fall River Walmart coming to life, as workers prep for July opening

Every time he walks into a store as a customer, he has one simple hope, Martin Disla said. “I’m a married man with five children,” Disla said. “I hope to save a dollar. “If I can save $20, my wife and I can go to the movies.” As the man...

Every time he walks into a store as a customer, he has one simple hope, Martin Disla said.

“I’m a married man with five children,” Disla said. “I hope to save a dollar.

“If I can save $20, my wife and I can go to the movies.”

As the manager of the Walmart in Fall River, Disla shares that hope with every customer he sees walking through the door.

And he expects to see a lot more customers walking through the doors soon.

Disla, on Thursday, was on the floor of the new Walmart in the Crossroads at 24, supervising 140 store employees and a small army of contractors as they prepared the 150,000-square-foot store for its grand opening in July.

“A few days ago, this was empty,” Disla said. “Right now, the store is starting to emerge.”

Shelves are up and signs are being hung from the ceiling. In the new grocery section, the shelves are black and shiny. General merchandise goes onto gray shelves. Boys toys get blue shelves, girls toys get pink. Pharmacy and cosmetics go onto shelves of beige.

“It helps our customers,” Disla said. “They can walk through and see where they want to go with a glance.

“Plus, the black makes it easier for us to clean. The black shows everything. You have to keep the black shelves clean.”

The store will replace the existing Walmart at the New Harbour Mall. The old store will close on one day and the new store will open the next, Disla said.

“That is a good location,” he said. “We remodeled it a few years back. But we didn’t have the room for a superstore there, and we knew our customers wanted that.”

The new store is located at the corner of Brayton Avenue and Jefferson Street. An empty mill, that last held a factory outlet mall, was torn down to open the site.

Now there’s a Walmart facing south and, about 200 yards away, a Sam’s Club, still under construction, facing west. Sam’s Club is scheduled to open in the fall. A gas station is also planned for the site.

There will be several new offerings at the new store and some carried from the old. The pharmacy will move, intact, from the old store to the new with no break in coverage, Disla said.

“There will be a money center for people who come in to cash their check and get money orders,” Disla said. There will also be a separate section in the front to pick up Internet orders. A Subway sandwich shop will be in the store.

“One great thing we are adding is fabrics and crafts,” Disla said. “We took it out of our other store, but our customers made it clear they wanted it back. Our associates told us we had to make sure we included fabrics and crafts.”

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That is a good example of how Walmart works, Disla said.

“The associates are really important here,” he said. “They know the community, they know the customers and they tell me what people want.

“The store depends on the community to talk to us and tell us what they want. We all have the same goal: We all want to help Fall River people save money.”